Lineages of Turkish power in early modern writing in English /

Abstract

The Ottoman Turks were of England's cultural others perhaps the most widely written about in the early modem period. The texts devoted to them cover a wide range of literary kinds, including history, drama, travel narrative, religious tract, newsbook, and ballad. This thesis concentrates pincipally on history writing and drama,a ddressing the image of the Turks as one of violent power, expressed in their immemorial hostility towards Christians, and in their internal dynastic relationships. The difference of the Turks is closely bound up in early modern writings with their descent, both in relation to distant forbears such as the Saracens and Scythians, and locally within the Ottoman dynasty. In approaching the early modern literature about the Turks as a series of interrelated lineages of power, my main aim has been to trace the relationship between the images of the ancient and modern Ottoman rulers. These two aspects of the early modern sense of the difference of the Turks are signalled by the division of the thesis into two parts, Part One, The Originall of the Turks, addressing ancient lineages, and Part Two The Image of the 0thoman Greatnesse, modern ones.